


Sea of Love

by papayaknight



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: AU, Based on Songs, Cecaelias, F/M, Mermaids, Ocean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papayaknight/pseuds/papayaknight
Summary: Daine has dreamed of leaving the ocean behind all her life but everything changes when she meets Numair, the cecaelia (squid mermaid). Will she leave her love to pursue her dreams or forsake everything she knows for a life beneath the waves?----Each chapter is based on a song (except one). The title is Sea of Love by Cat Power. I'm marking this as complete for now, but I may likely come back and flesh it out with more chapters in the future.
Relationships: Numair Salmalín/Veralidaine Sarrasri
Kudos: 4





	1. Ocean Eyes - Billie Eilish

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that every time I reference Numair's tentacles, the technical term is arms, but that would be super confusing to read so I'm using tentacles instead.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daine sees Numair for the first time.

You’d think the tentacles would be the first thing she noticed. 

Eight of them, right where legs should be, propelling the creature across the rocks as he moved. She had been exploring far down the coast when she came across him in a rocky cove. It couldn’t have been easy for him to move on land, but he somehow seemed graceful.

And anyway, if it wasn’t the tentacles you’d think it would’ve been his skin. Smooth and glistening like blubber on a seal, and stretching to webs between his fingers as he bent down to pick up a rock or shell. Or perhaps she noticed the way his hair hung like clumps of seaweed down his back, and imagined the way it would float around his head in the water. 

But it wasn’t any of those things she first noticed. It was, in fact, his eyes. 

They landed on her as she rounded the corner, hardly a few feet from him, and stuck her to the spot. Daine wasn’t a writer by any means, but if you had asked her to describe his eyes in words, the best word she could come up with was ocean. 

She knew a lot about the ocean, having lived on it her entire life, and she knew the immense variety it contained. His eyes seemed to grasp that immensity and somehow begin to contain it. They were in one second as light as the rocky tide pools she loved to explore, a pale blue graced by the sun’s reflection. In the next, they were as dangerous as the crashing waves against the boat during a storm and at least as deep. She worried she would be lost in them forever, never to find her way back to land. 

After this encounter, she never would find her way back to the life she once knew, but Daine could hardly have any idea of that in the moment. 

She stood, staring into his eyes like a deer into headlights until suddenly he tensed and threw himself across the rocky beach into the ocean. 

“Wait,” she yelled, “Come back!” She stumbled as she ran across the rocks and waded knee-deep into the water. “Please, I just want to talk to you!” She scanned the water, searching for some sign of whoever, whatever she had just seen, but it was too late. He was gone, leaving her dumbfounded, with nothing but overwhelming curiosity and a memory of his piercing blue ocean eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet!  
> Again, I have to say, his "tentacles" are technically arms, but that would be really weird to visualize. Please don't come for me I know it's not right but I did for us.


	2. The Saltwater Room - Owl City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numair does NOT care about that girl who saw him on the beach. Definitely not.  
> (Bonus song - First Kiss by Joey Pecoraro at the end)

Numair definitely wasn’t stalking her. 

If anything, she, the mysterious woman who had seen him searching for pretty stones and shells on the beach to decorate his cave a few days ago, was the one stalking him. She was clearly searching for him, spending a lot of time along the beach and the docks, especially the cove she originally saw him at. 

He was just keeping an eye on her so she didn't sneak up on him while he was unaware. Besides, that was the best beach for finding pretty things and he wanted to know when she finally left so he could go back. 

At least, that was what he told himself. 

Those excuses felt pretty thin as he made his way closer and closer to the shore of the bay she was walking along. Twilight had crept over the scene and the dying rays of the sun seemed to light a halo around her curly brown hair as she walked. He could tell she had a much more stubborn personality than her innocent appearance suggested. Not that he spent much time considering this annoying human’s personality, of course, it was just obvious from the one encounter he had with her, and the last few days he had watched her from afar. 

Dang, he really was acting like a stalker.

He was so deep in his own thoughts he almost didn't notice that the girl had stopped moving and was now standing still, a few feet into the surf. As the gentle waves wrapped around her ankles, she kept her gaze fixed on the darkening sky above, where a few stars were just beginning to twinkle. Cautiously, he crept closer and closer until his body was barely covered by the water. 

“I know you’re there,” she said, without taking her eyes off the sky. Numair immediately stopped moving, frozen in the water waiting to see what she would do next. 

“My name’s Daine, by the way,” she continued. “I’ve seen you following me around the last few days.” 

Numair apparently was not quite as stealthy as he thought.

“I asked some dock workers about you,” Daine continued, oblivious to Numair’s embarrassment. “They said you occasionally show up to trade pearls and other ocean-bottom treasures with them. You’re clearly not ignorant to human culture. Why didn't you approach me when you saw me looking for you?” 

Numair contemplated this question. It was true that he did enjoy his trips to the docks to trade with the workers and watch them as they went about their day. But that was simple, a familiar action to trade one thing for another for any ocean creature, even a ‘heartless’ cecaelia. Their peculiar human ways of doing things he always watched from afar, interested, but never a participant. 

After another moment’s deliberation, he raised his head slightly out the water and spoke. “A quick business transaction is far different than whatever you and I have been doing.” 

Daine laughed, a loud, ringing sound. “We haven’t been doing anything. We’ve been merely dancing around, trying to avoid stepping on each other’s toes.” Apparently confident he wouldn’t disappear into the ocean again, she finally looked down at him, a faint shape in the shallow water. “Now that we finally have achieved dialogue, why don’t we actually do something?” 

Puzzled, Numair cocked his head. “What could you want to do with me? If you’ve spoken to the dock workers did they not tell you about me? That I am cecaelia, incapable of feeling any kind of emotion?” He stirred his tentacles in the water as he spoke, sending up a cloud of sand behind him. Although he was used to what people assumed about him, he couldn’t stop the hurt that ran through him with each casual insinuation. 

‘What happens when you give a fish a brain but no heart?’ Numair had heard all the jokes in his travels and learned how to smile and nod them away. He wished they were true. If they were, he would still be with his old pod and would finally be able to fit in. If they were, there certainly wouldn’t be this empty feeling he had carried with him his whole life. Sometimes he thought the common joke was true, and he was forever looking for the heart Oinomi had forgotten to give him. 

A bold voice broke him out of his pity party. 

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” Daine said. “I always thought cecaelia were just myth, and you’ve already proved me wrong on that one.” 

Fair enough, Numair thought. 

“Ok,” he said. “Let’s do something.” 

They ended up spending the whole night together. They swapped stories of adventures living on, or in, the ocean, both trying to top the other in ridiculousness or grandeur. Numair told her why he had been on land the day she first saw him, and even took her to see one of the underwater caves nearby, one with a connection to the surface so she could still breathe, of course. 

Numair couldn’t remember the last time he had talked so much or felt such genuine happiness. 

As he said goodbye, he remembered a common human custom he had heard of but never had a chance to try and shyly asked, “Would you like to kiss me goodnight?” 

He swam away with a curious new feeling in his chest and a wish to see her again.


	3. She Looks So Perfect - 5 Seconds of Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why are they so cute

“Don’t move,” was the last thing Daine heard from Numair before he ducked under the waves. 

“Numair,” she said, laughing, “You know I have to move at least a little to stay afloat.” He popped his head above the water again, dark green hair floating around him like a bed of kelp, with a few stray hairs dripping water down his forehead. He blinked as she reached out to move them out of the way, kicking her legs and using her other arm to balance above the water as she did so. 

“Hey! I said don’t move,” he said chidingly, but made no move to stop her. “I’ll be right back, I just have to make sure everything is ready.” He dropped out of sight below the water. A few seconds later he reappeared, a concerned look on his face. “Just checking, you know when I said ‘don’t move,’ what I meant was, ‘stay here, but definitely move enough so you don’t drown, right? Because I-” 

“Numair! Go already,” she said, pushing his head underwater as she laughed. He obliged, slipping out of her sight in a second. 

Floating her legs up and laying back, Daine floated on her back, gently buffeted by the salty waves and warm midday sun drying her face. It was moments like these she almost doubted her resolve to leave the ocean behind. It had been her goal her entire life living on the open seas, but now that she had finally made it to land, nothing was as simple as her childlike innocence believed it would be. 

Numair had thrown a wrench in her gears, but she couldn’t complain. 

Speaking of, she heard a splash and righted herself just in time to see his lithe body cresting the water and take a deep breath as his arms wrapped tightly around her and he dragged them both down. 

As Numair shot them through the water, Daine relaxed, tucking her head into the crook of his neck. Growing up at sea, she could hold her breath for longer than most, and besides, she knew Numair was fast enough to get them wherever they were going before she was even close to running out of air. 

Sure enough, they were only underwater for less than a minute, Numair diving deep before surfacing quickly in a cave well lit with a warm glow, candles burning on every available surface. He easily pulled himself out of the water onto the rocky floor, carrying Daine along with him before gently setting her down and looking around them. 

“Do you like it?” He asked, almost shyly. “I’ve heard that an abundance of candlelight is supposedly romantic to humans.” 

“Numair,” Daine gasped, the only word she seemed to be able to say today. “Like it? I love it! Thank you so much. It’s beautiful.” 

She pulled him in for a kiss, which he gladly obliged before pulling back and saying, “That’s actually not the full surprise.” She looked at him curiously, waiting to see what else he had come up with in his adventures into human romance. 

He took a step back, turning his head to the side and moving his hair out of the way until she could see the black lines forming an arrow-pierced heart on his neck. 

“You got a tattoo?” She cried, crowding into his space and running her hands over it as if it would wash away with a rub of her finger. 

“Well... yeah,” he responded. “Jon did it for me. He said it was ‘all the rage’ and would ‘prove I’m no coward when it comes to love.’” 

With this, Daine could no longer take it. She started laughing and couldn’t stop, waving her hands towards Numair as he looked concerned but also slightly amused at her gasping for air. 

Eventually, she calmed down and sat on the floor to catch her breath. Leaning back with her hands out behind her, she looked at Numair where he was also sitting across from her, his tentacles in some sort of complicated knot underneath him. He was looking at her with a curious expression on his face. 

“What,” she said with a smile. 

“What?” He answered. “Nothing. You just- you just look so perfect right now.” 

She looked silently at him for a second, before responding by tackling him to the ground where they both started laughing all over again.


	4. No Song

The cold hit her like a punch to the gut. Frigid water surrounded her in an instant and she felt herself sinking quickly. “Curse these court garments,” she thought bitterly, thrashing against the offending garments as they impeded her kicks and dragged her down farther. 

Frustrated, she began grabbing cloth and indiscriminately ripping, trying to get free. She could barely see through the overskirt floating up around her face but felt in the next moment a pair of arms grabbing her tightly around the waist and the familiar smooth texture of rubbery skin against her arms. Immediately, she relaxed and let herself be propelled quickly to the surface. 

“Shimmer,” she said gratefully, leaning back against the man’s shoulder as he kept them both floating at the top of the water. “Will you help me get the rest of this cursed skirt off? I wore trousers underneath for just this reason.” 

“You wore trousers underneath your expensive court gown,” he said amusedly, “Because you suspected that in going to a ball it would be very likely you would end up drowning in the middle of the ocean?” As he was speaking, he finished wrapping his tentacles around the rest of her skirt and ripped it away from the bodice, letting it sink to the ocean floor. 

“You laugh, but look where we are now,” She huffed. After a moment of silence, she closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her salt-soaked skin and feeling perfectly safe and comfortable in Shimmer’s arms. 

“Thanks, by the way. For more than saving me right now, I mean, thanks for... well. You know.” 

“You’re welcome,” he said, because he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the very first thing I wrote, so I don't have a song to go with it.


	5. Into My Arms - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numair tries to find some peace.

Numair wasn’t normally a religious creature, but even he couldn’t resist the feeling of sanctity that came over him as he entered the grounds of the temple. He swam silently through the grounds, past the clerics tending to the colorful coral beds, under the sweeping arch with prayers carved down its sides, until he was finally kneeling before the monument to the Wave-walker herself. 

He rested on the floor, quiet in thought for a moment. 

Although he had spent the entirety of yesterday swimming here, at no slow pace either, he still didn't know exactly why he had come. The best he could guess was that, besides his efforts to distance himself from the rituals of his kind, there was a spiritual link between all creatures of the ocean that none could deny. When he felt uncertain and overwhelmed by the emotions Daine had brought into his life with her presence, he could no more deny his obvious path to solace and, hopefully, some kind of answer as he could deny his own existence.

And so he found himself awkwardly sitting on the ocean floor talking to a statue, trying to avoid making eye contact with the clerics that occasionally swam past him. 

“So... I’m not sure what to say here,” he started, hesitatingly. “I suppose I should be more respectful, say ‘My Lady’ and use ‘thou’s and ‘thine’s and all that. But this is the best I can do right now, so, please. Stick with me?” 

Numair paused and glanced to the side for a few seconds as a mermaid dressed in the warm pastels of clerical clothing swam near him, smiling warmly at him as she passed. He gave a slight nod in response and, after a moment, returned to looking at the statue.

“You see, I don’t really believe in the whole interventionist Goddess thing. I left behind my pod and their beliefs a long time ago. But I know Daine does. Daine is a girl, uhh, she’s my, well, you know all things, so I don’t have to try to explain it to you, right?” He sighed and readjusted his tentacles, not from them being uncomfortable on the sandy floor but more to give himself something to do while he spoke.

“The thing is, she makes me believe in things like angels.” As he said this he stopped fidgeting and looked up into Oinomi’s stone eyes as he spoke. “She makes me feel like I’m not some broken creature, too emotional to be cecaelia and too heartless to be human. So please, if you have to intervene in her life, if you are guiding us somehow, guide her into my arms. I swear I’ll never leave her. I’d give my life for her. Because she gives me hope, which is something I never thought I could have.” 

With this final statement, Numair fell silent and just sat for a while. He remained there deep in thought until the same cleric swam up to him, gently informing him there were other patrons waiting to pray. With a blush, he acquiesced and slowly swam out of the temple, beginning his long journey back to the docks and back to the woman who, although he didn't know the name for his unknown feeling, he had fallen in love with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oinomi Wavewalker, also called the Wave-walker by her worshipers, sea goddess, goddess of sailors, storms, and shipwrecks. She is mostly worshipped in the Yamani Islands. Look at me go actually making my AU relate to the books. Also, should I make a playlist somewhere with all the songs? Does anyone even listen to them? Let me know.


	6. I Don't Wanna Love Somebody Else - A Great Big World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daine gives Numair her answer.

He was floating on his back, counting the stars in the sky when she came to the dock to give him her answer and say goodbye. 

“It’s okay,” she cried with tears in her eyes. “I mean, it’s not okay, it’s terrible, but this is how it has to be.” 

She stood on the edge of the dock looking down at Numair in the water, and he thought how the difference in elevation between them was a very fitting metaphor for where they were emotionally right now. 

“My whole life I’ve been waiting to come to land, and you could never leave the ocean. We would hate each other if we stayed together. I - I love you, and I don’t want to hate you. Isn’t it better to leave in love than stay and grow apart like that? Even though it hurts so, so much right now, we’ll be okay. You’ll forget about me as fast as you knew me, and then you can fall in love with somebody else.” She started out almost yelling, but by the end seemed broken, desperate to convince herself of what she knew to be the truth, but seemed too terrible to be right when she looked him in the eyes. 

“I don’t want to love somebody else,” Numair said, so softly he wasn’t sure if she even heard him. He grabbed the edge of the dock and pulled himself up so his arms were resting on the cold, damp wood. He hoped he got splinters. “I don’t care if I never see you again, I will always love you. If you’re looking for me to back up your choice, I can’t do that. Everything you say is right, your decision makes sense, but I don’t have any sense anymore. All I have is love, and it’s all I ever want to have, even if it kills me when I have to watch you leave.” 

He stared at her and refused to look away, even when he was done talking and silence reigned between them both. If this was the last time he got to look at her, he wasn’t going to waste a second of it. 

Daine seemed drained of all her energy and sat down heavily next to him, dangling her legs over the deck. She leaned forward to put a hand against his cheek and he pressed against it, savoring the warmth she always had. He had never been as warm as he was when he was with her. 

He supposed it was his fault. He knew from the very beginning she longed to get away from the ocean, from the endless expanse of water that had been all she’d ever known. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from hoping that he would be enough to make her stay. 

As he stared into her eyes and watched the tears fall down her face, he felt oddly detached. He knew he should leave, make it easier for both of them, but he couldn’t move. He was frozen in that moment, frozen in the feel of her hand on his face, the planks of the dock digging into his arm, and taste of salt on his lips. 

With a choked sob, Daine turned her head away and withdrew her hand, trembling as it left his skin. He stayed silent and unmoving as he watched her walk away, head held as high as ever but shoulders shaking in silent sobs. He realized with slight surprise that the salt on his lips wasn’t from the ocean water, but tears running down his face. 

He never knew he could cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Numair b sad :,( sorry for the gut punch of an ending lol but I might add more chapters to make it a happy ending? idk


End file.
